The bottom of the note included instructions on how to be removed from the boycott's mailing list. "Please contact Susan Wilson, Islamic Peace Activist" it stated, followed by Shiksaa's street address, with her country of residence listed as "United States of Aggression." (The use of Shiksaa's married name, which she had accidentally published in the alt.test newsgroup in 1999, suggested the Joe-jobbers were not affiliated with Spambusta1.)
As Shiksaa mulled over the events of the past few weeks, she realized this was not the time to quit spam fighting. It didn't matter how tired she was of battling vindictive spammers. If they thought they could drive her out, they had very badly underestimated her. If anything, they made her more determined than ever to get in their faces.[5]
Shiksaa increasingly came to place the ultimate blame for her troubles at the feet of Scott Richter. He had painted himself as her confidant and defender against The Gang That Can't Shoot Straight. Yet he had also taunted her with her confidential information weeks ago, and he did nothing to stop its dissemination by others. Shiksaa decided it was time to abandon her naïve allegiance to Richter and her other spammer sources.
On April 8, Shiksaa assembled a small collection of AIM log files from her conversations with Richter, Waggoner, and a handful of other junk emailers. She sanitized the logs somewhat by replacing the spammers' true screen names with generics such as "CO Spammer" for Richter and "702 AC Spammer" for Waggoner. Shiksaa then published the log files at Chickenboner.com and announced the project, which she called "The Bulk Barn Diaries," on Nanae.
"I've decided to post my memoirs relating to the spam wars, including instant messages from a number of spammers. Kind of a spammer-undercover type thing," she wrote.
The move agitated the junk emailers involved, and they immediately sent Shiksaa frothing complaints. But she ignored them. She really didn't care if she burned any bridges. Not after what they had done to her.
It was almost an anticlimax when, a week later, the long-threatened lawsuit from Florida arrived.
Mark Felstein, the personal lawyer for Florida spam king Eddy Marin, filed the lawsuit against Shiksaa and eight other anti-spammers in a Federal court for Florida's southern district. In his complaint, Felstein listed as his client and plaintiff EmarketersAmerica.org, a Florida nonprofit. Besides Shiksaa, the individual defendants named in the complaint were Steve Linford and his brother Julian, Alan Murphy, Steven Sobol, Clifton Sharp, Richard Tietjens (a.k.a. Morely Dotes), Adam Brower, and Joe Jared. Also named as defendants were Spews.org and Spamhaus.org, along with their domain registration service, Joker.com.
According to the complaint, members of EmarketersAmerica.org included unnamed "email marketers, Internet service providers, and other related businesses." The complaint alleged that the eight defendants were all officers of both Spews and Spamhaus and accused them of libel, invasion of privacy, business interference, and other charges. The complaint requested punitive and compensatory damages from the defendants.
State of Florida records showed that Felstein had incorporated EmarketersAmerica.org just over a month before, naming himself as a director. In an interview with a Florida business magazine, Felstein claimed that EmarketersAmerica.org had approximately fifty members, forty of which had paid $3,000 in annual dues. He refused to name the members, citing fear of reprisals from anti-spammers.[6]
But Shiksaa and the other codefendants (who came to be known as "The Nanae Nine") were fairly certain that Marin and his gang were behind the lawsuit. It wasn't clear to the anti-spammers why they had been chosen as targets for the suit. They saw it as a thinly veiled attempt to make them roll over and disclose the true operators of the Spews blacklist. They were determined to make Felstein regret the lawsuit. They made arrangements to enlist the services of Pete Wellborn, the Georgia attorney who had earned the nickname "The Spammer Hammer" from successful litigations against high-profile spammers, including Sanford Wallace.
Meanwhile, Scott Richter was watching the legal proceedings from a safe distance. As U.S. troops took control of Baghdad that week, he began to mail millions of email ads with the subject line "Get the Iraq Most Wanted Deck of Cards." The spams promoted "the one true collector's item from Operation Iraqi Freedom"—replicas of the playing cards given by the Pentagon to coalition soldiers. The cards featured photos and brief descriptions of the fifty-five most-wanted leaders of Saddam Hussein's regime, with Saddam himself depicted on the ace of diamonds.
The spam campaign turned out to be even more successful than Richter's post-9/11 U.S. flags project. Although he hadn't even received his stock yet from the supplier, within a week of sending out the first spams, he had already taken 40,000 orders for the playing cards.
This time, Richter wasn't giving the money to charity.
* * *
[1] Details of this phone conversation were provided by Bill Waggoner during a June 23, 2004, interview.
[2] Shiksaa used this brief December 2002 exchange with Waggoner as her newsgroup signature line beginning in April 2003.
[3] Shiksaa published the AIM log file of this conversation with Richter in the "Bulk Barn Diaries" section of her Chickenboner.com site.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Shiksaa explained her determination to fight back against The Gang That Can't Shoot Straight during an April 1, 2004, interview.
[6] South Florida Business Journal; May 9, 2003. The newspaper also quoted Felstein as saying "I can't give out the names right now because of a history of threatening calls and e-mails to my office."
Patricia's Graveyard Gambit
Just outside St. Johnsbury, Vermont, the tire on Davis Hawke's Ford Crown Victoria blew. It was barely six o'clock on a chilly morning in late April 2003. Brad Bournival had been dozing in the passenger seat, when Hawke cursed loudly and pulled over to the shoulder on I-93. They had been on the road for about four hours, after spending the evening at Foxwoods Casino in southeastern Connecticut. In recent weeks, Hawke and Bournival had regularly taken some of their profits from penis pills to the casino's seventy-six-table poker room. And tonight, like most nights, the spammers came away a bit richer.
But Hawke had seemed distracted when they cashed out around two a.m. As soon as they got outside, he was on his cell phone, trying to reach Patricia. Since moving to Rhode Island that winter, Hawke had been back to Vermont only a couple of times. That left Patricia mostly alone, except for their wolves. She had been taking classes at Lyndonville College, and Hawke usually phoned her every few days. But he'd been unable to reach her for a week, and she wasn't responding to the messages he left on the answering machine.[7]
When they got to Hawke's car in the casino parking lot, Hawke said he had decided to head up to Vermont and check on Patricia. Bournival had never been to Lyndonville, so he agreed to go along. He would regret it later when, by the side of the freeway that morning, Hawke revealed that the car had no spare tire. (Although Hawke had hundreds of thousands of dollars stashed away, he insisted on driving beat-up used cars. He was particularly fond of old Crown Vics, especially if they had been police cars in a former life.)
Hawke tried phoning Patricia again, in hopes that she would drive down to pick them up. No answer. Fortunately, Bournival had a AAA card and arranged a tow into St. Johnsbury. As they waited for the tire shop to open at eight, the young men grabbed breakfast at a bagel shop and were back on the road by 9:30.
Such temporary diversions were nothing extraordinary for the co-owners of Amazing Internet Products. They had encountered several problems at the start, most notably when AOL suddenly cranked up the effectiveness of its spam filters. But after switching to a new proxy-based mailing program, Super Mailer, they were able to get their messages through. Soon, business was humming along again nicely. With their new no-limit merchant account, both Hawke and Bournival often pulled down over a thousand dollars per day. Pinacle penis-enhancement pills remained their cash cow, but the partners also experimented with spamming for products such as human growth hormone and CD-ROMs
containing information about government grants. They also mailed the occasional run of ads for Power Diet Plus pills and the Banned CD.
As Hawke eased the Crown Vic into the cabin's empty driveway, Bournival noticed the building's front door was wide open. Hawke cut the engine, jumped out of the car, and ran to the cabin. Bournival trailed right behind, half expecting to find Patricia's lifeless body on the floor.
Inside, the cabin appeared to have been ransacked. Books had been knocked off the shelves onto the floor of the living room. Couch cushions were flung about the room. Dishes, some of them with dried-on food, had apparently been hurled onto the floor. Hawke yelled Patricia's name as he moved quickly through the small house. Her clothes were gone from the bedroom closet. So was a thick roll of hundred-dollar bills he had stashed behind the wall paneling.
"Fuck," was all Hawke said as he circled back to the open front door. On the front step, Hawke cupped his hands to his mouth and howled loudly. Then he began walking around the back of the cabin, howling. He was hoping to call in Dreighton from the woods somewhere. At the edge of the clearing, Hawke suddenly dropped to his hands and knees on the ground. "Fuck!" he shouted again, as he realized a large stash of cash he had buried there was gone.
Bournival watched Hawke get up and walk slowly back toward the cabin. He stopped just outside the front door and stared down at the ground, as if unwilling to face the scene inside again.
Bournival took a step toward him. "What do you think happened?" he asked.
Hawke didn't answer. He just shrugged, his eyes glassy with tears. He seemed afraid to speak, in case his voice might crack. Hawke pushed past Bournival and headed back inside.
Bournival remained outside. He'd never seen much emotion from Hawke, and he wasn't sure how to deal with this unusual display. Bournival's instincts told him Patricia had grown tired of being Hawke's squaw and had run out. Bournival surmised that she had probably taken what she considered her half of Hawke's money. He wondered whether she would also try to plunder the Swiss bank account Hawke had sometimes mentioned.
When Hawke came back outside a few minutes later, Bournival suggested they visit the college and ask around about Patricia.
"Yeah, that's a good idea," Hawke said. It was the first time Bournival could recall being the one to set their agenda.
After persuading college officials to track down one of Patricia's professors, Hawke learned that she had missed several meetings of her biology class. But he was unable to find anyone who could provide information about her current whereabouts. After a brief stop back at the cabin, during which Hawke gathered up some of his belongings, the two young men hit the road heading south. Hawke dropped Bournival at his place in Manchester and returned to Pawtucket alone.
At that point, Hawke tried the only lifeline he had left. He sent Patricia an email.
To his surprise, she wrote back a couple of days later. She revealed that she was somewhere in Michigan and had both wolves with her. She also admitted that she had used some of the cash she took to buy a new pickup truck. Hawke persuaded her to email him her phone number. When they finally spoke, he pleaded with her to come home. She refused, saying she was starting over. She had cut her hair short and dyed it blonde as part of an identity change. Taking a page from Hawke's old PrivacyBuff.com site, she used a technique called the "graveyard gambit" to sign up for a social security number in the name of a girl who had died in infancy.
Hawke offered her a deal. If she came back with all his money, he'd find a nice, big house where they could live. He promised he'd spend more time with her. He'd pay for her to take classes at a college in Rhode Island. He'd even buy her a fur coat.
Patricia told him she'd think about it.
The next day, she was on her way to Pawtucket. A few weeks later, they moved into a new three-bedroom house together in North Smithfield, a few miles outside Pawtucket. The place had a two-car garage and a large, sunny yard with an in-ground swimming pool, flowerbeds, and ornamental trees. It was the sort of tidy suburban home where young, professional couples might start a family.
But once Patricia returned all of Hawke's money—aside from the cash she'd spent on her truck—he was done dabbling in domesticity. Patricia had been his lodestone for the past five years. But he didn't want a wife, and he sure as hell didn't want children. He didn't want to wake up one day attached to a ball and chain, no longer free to bang young women or hang out in casinos or hike up mountains in the middle of the night. His ten-year plan was to be living on a tropical island somewhere, ideally with a little tropical girl by his side.[8]
* * *
[7] Bournival described Hawke's problems contacting Patricia during the May 10, 2004, interview.
[8] During our May 10, 2004, interview, Hawke cited these things as reasons why he would never get married.
Creampie Productions
By June 2003, America Online boasted around thirty-seven million customer accounts, making it by far the biggest Internet service provider in the world. Since each of these subscribers was entitled to register up to seven different screen names, AOL actually maintained some ninety-two million email addresses on its system.
Davis Hawke and Brad Bournival owned a list of all of them.
They had bought the list for $52,000 in late May 2003 from a fellow spammer. The man, who said his name was Sean, told them he had a copy of the complete AOL member database, including customer names, street addresses, and telephone numbers. Sean said he bought the list from an AOL software engineer who had stolen it from the big ISP's customer-data warehouse.
Neither Hawke nor Bournival gave much thought to the fact that buying the stolen list from Sean might make them coconspirators in a crime, namely a violation of the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. To them, the AOL screen names would be a gold mine. (Hawke and Bournival had no immediate use for the AOL subscribers' physical addresses and telephone numbers.) Amazing Internet previously used a list of around twenty million AOL addresses that Hawke had assembled from a variety of sources, including web page harvesting. But the old list contained a large percentage of undeliverable addresses. That often caused AOL's mail servers to automatically drop connections from Amazing's spamware programs in the middle of a run, since AOL had tuned its servers to recognize potential spam attacks.
Earlier that spring, Bournival had tried to solve this problem by signing up for Massive F/X, a web-driven bulk-email system marketed by Tom Cowles of Empire Towers. The company charged around $3,000 per month for a package that allowed spammers to send emails using a proprietary system Cowles had developed.
When Bournival talked to Cowles by phone, the Ohio spammer boasted that Massive F/X, if used properly, was capable of getting through any spam filter, including those deployed by AOL. But after Bournival wired Empire Towers the first month's fee, Cowles never sent him his account login information. Bournival bugged Cowles by phone nearly every day for a week, and Cowles kept promising to set him up the next day. But in the end, Cowles never delivered and stopped taking Bournival's calls.
Although it was pricey, AOL's stolen customer database gave Amazing Internet a huge surge in sales in June. The list contained only real, deliverable email addresses, so the response rate was much better than other lists. Plus, Hawke knew he could easily turn around and sell the addresses to other spammers to recoup his investment. He had already made some quick money that spring selling his lists of eBay and AOL addresses for hundreds of dollars.[9]
As customer orders for Pinacle pills flowed in that June, Hawke began to rethink his past reluctance to spamming for pornography. Amazing Internet had accumulated a verified list of well over 100,000 people who wanted bigger penises. It would be a no-brainer to cross-market porn to that list.
One night, Hawke and Mauricio brainstormed a possible plan. They could produce their own amateur videos, a popular segment of the Internet porn business. To save money, they could film the whole thing in Colombia, where Mauricio and his girlfriend Liliana had family. Th
ey'd develop a new niche, XXX-rated videos with amateur young women from all over South America.[10]
Neither Hawke nor Ruiz knew anything about videography, but they knew Bournival had played around with video editing on his computer. Hawke brought Bournival in on his plan, and Creampie Productions, their new company, was born.
Soon, Liliana was helping Hawke make arrangements with a firm in Bogotá that could do the filming. Then, with Hawke and Bournival fronting their expenses, Liliana and Mauricio flew to Colombia. They had no script to work with or even any specific directions for the video. They simply rounded up a handful of girls and a couple dozen guys and paid them to perform sex in front of the camera. A week later, Mauricio returned home with DVD-ROMs containing ten hours of raw video and a huge grin on his face.
Bournival took on the job of editing the video down to marketable segments. But after previewing parts of the film, his excitement about Creampie Productions waned. The young women weren't especially attractive, and the quality of both the audio and video was mediocre. At the time, Bournival was swamped with running Amazing Internet Products, so the DVDs remained on a shelf in his apartment. (Bournival nonetheless changed his profile at chessclub.com to include the line, "I am a video producer of amateur pornos.")
Hawke, however, was fascinated by Mauricio's tales of his adventures with women in Colombia. The stories revived Hawke's dissatisfaction with monogamy. He'd seen Internet sites that offered to match up American men with young Latinas from South America. But Hawke had a more direct plan in mind. He bought Ruiz another plane ticket, this time to Bolivia, and gave him instructions to bring home for Hawke an attractive teenaged woman willing to prostitute herself.
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